Church Voices

How many of you wore the bracelet? You know what I’m talking about. Almost ten years ago you could go anywhere in the country and see anyone from Billy Graham to Dennis Rodman wearing one. Yes, I’m referring to the infamous “What Would Jesus Do” bracelet. I’ll admit, I owned two myself: a green one and a black one. The green one was given to me, but I bought the black one to enhance my rebel without a cause, bad-boy image [you know, “Screw you, Satan, I’m on the other team”].

Derived from the fictional book In His Steps by Charles Sheldon, the entire evangelical nation began asking itself how it would react to certain situations based upon the actions of our Lord and Savior. Now that’s interesting in itself because Jesus was the incarnation of God Almighty and he had this mission to save the world from eternal damnation that had a bit of an effect to his actions. We could debate the theological correctness of even asking WWJD but that’s a swamp that I have no interest in swimin’ in. Maybe someone else can do it later.

Anyway, getting to what I really wanted to ask: how true does the American Christian community apply WWJD today?

Here’s what I’m thinking about: gay marriage. I think almost all the readers of this website would agree that homosexuality is not within the will of God, and neither is homosexual marriage. But how important is this issue to the church as a whole? I read a recent survey that polled evangelical Christians, asking them what the important issues of the church were. Rated higher than helping the poor and even winning people to Christ was opposing homosexual marriage. Hmmm, the church of Jesus Christ: stopping gay atrocities from sea to shinning sea.

I was recently asked to sign a petition to send to Congress in Washington that declared gay marriage morally wrong and requesting a constitution amendment banning it. Hey, everyone’s entitled to their opinion; this is America and we have the freedom of speech. But I was told by the people in passing around the petition that it was my duty as a Christian to sign it. In the forgotten, albeit Gnostic, Gospel of Thomas Jesus makes reference to petition signing, “Blessed are those who sign petitions, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

This issue has me thinking, would Jesus have signed this petition? If Jesus were here today would he be campaigning against gay marriage? Would He have accused homosexuals of destroying the moral formation upon which Israel, um, I mean, America was founded?

Or perhaps a better question . . .

Are we, the church of Christ in the world today, killing our witness for the sake of achieving political success concerning a moral issue?

J. Sidlow Baxter said the following, “When the church preaches morality, morality often declines. But when the church preaches Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected, morals often prevail.”

What would Jesus do?